Rounding Up Tips - By Restaurant
 

I have never had this happen before, but am not really good about checking my credit card statement against receipts unless something glaring occurs, so maybe I have.

I transited MEM last month and stopped for dinner at one of the BBQ places (C gate area I think). I was looking at my statement and saw a charge for $30.00 I also happened to be going through expense reports and saw the receipt was for $29.33 - $25.33 plus $4.00 tip. Normally I would probably throw on another $, but service was rather poor, so went with 15%.

I could see a typo entering the final charge could end up $29.93, $293.30, $2.93 and so on, but rounding up to the next even dollar seems intentional. 67 cents is not a big deal to me, but I wonder if this is happening to hundreds of customers a day transiting airports. It is probably not somewhere you are going to frequent, go back to fight over and so on - as opposed to a local place you might go weekly that would lose repeat business.

Anyone else ever see this? I did an online dispute with my CC company to get it corrected it and flag it to VISA.

Ironically, this morning I was talking to an accounts payable clerk on my bus ride into work. She told me that they have been having a similar issue with expense vouchers recently, where the amex bill will come back at one number and the receipt will be off by a dollar or so.

I'd definitely flag it to the CC company. Especially if you have the original receipts. You could fax them a copy to use as evidence against the restaurant. I'm sure they will reverse it and the message will get to the restaurant in some shape or form. To me that's plain forgery and impersonation which is illegal whether it's 67 cents or $67 it's the principal that would tick me off!

Glad you got your CC bank to fix it. I've never experienced tip tampering. All I can say is.......wow. :td:

You sometimes see that in the approval process, but once settlement occurs it should be for the exact amount. If it's on your bill it should be exactly as you charged.

Now if I could just figure a way to get them to hold my gasoline approvals at $1 :p

Transaction was 2/7 and it posted 2/9 and I have already paid the bill, so it is not a case of the hold not catching up with the actual amount. It was not a carbon receipt, so the CC company would really need to get the copy I left in MEM to prove what was written. I agree it is more principal than anything and would like to see it investigated.

I haven't seen this particular issue, but why would you tip 15% for poor service? :confused: People doing this are one of the reasons I think service is getting so bad at many eating establishments. IMO 15% is for good service and you work down for poor and up for exceptional.

I would dispute it just to put the card company on notice to watch out for other complaints from this particular establishment.

I had a receipt that was more than what I paid at a local restaurant I went to a lot (I do the quicken entry and compare it to credit card statements). It wasn't a lot but it was principle so I called the credit card company to contest it, and since they were local and I was curious, also brought the receipt in to ask.

The guy had all the receipts for that day (I had the original receipt with me) and was able to pinpoint that at some point in the evening, they had a problem (apparently it was something that happened pretty frequently) and b/c they didn't correct it properly from that point on, any additional monies/tips were actually applied to the next person's credit card instead of the one who was giving the tip. :td: The guy seemed a bit po'd that it happened, but did not seem overly concerned like he was going to correct anything and it wasn't clear if it was only that night or a longer term issue - I have no idea if he ever did anything, but needless to say the few times I've been back I've paid in cash.

10% for O.K. service, 15% for good service, 20%for exceptional service, 0% for bad service!

Pretty close to my own standard, although I've gone as high as 25% for backflip type service (both my zero and my 25% have happened twice, so it is a very low/high standard). I might bump up this amount by 3 to 5% if I'm told the standard for the place is higher, but truly bad service gets zip. I'll always explain why - either in person if I can, or on the slip if I can't. Both zeros have been at sushi places - one where we were ignored for what we suspected was race reasons (two out of the four of us were "ghosts" in a mainly Chinese place) and the other was a case where my lunchmate got served and I got a doggy bag. No race issues here, just competence. No offer to comp the lunch or anything. Appaling

Agree! ^ :D ^

It happens more often than you can imagine -most people wouldn't check their receipts and final credit card statements and the waitstaff who want to be deceptive know this. Good reminder to check statements ... today .67 cents, tomorrow $67 dollars ...!